


The SSV Normandy needs more combat drones

by themoonowl



Series: A Real Hero [9]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Breakfast, Colonist (Mass Effect), Crew as Family, Crushes, Engineers, Gen, Krogans, M/M, Mass Effect 1, Realization, Technobabble, drones, rockets, technobabble metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 02:23:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21218999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoonowl/pseuds/themoonowl
Summary: Samed and Tali create their own combat drones.*to Temptation Sensation by Heinz Kiessling*The Gang Blows Up A Krogan





	The SSV Normandy needs more combat drones

Samed and Tali were close to making this thing work.

Tali had taken a peek—so to speak—in the geth data Samed had given her a copy of. The knowledge she'd extrapolated was code that all geth recon drones carried with them.

For the past two weeks, Samed and Tali had tried to repurpose some of that code, a robot-shaped  _ thing  _ made from leftover parts from the Mako being their first prototype; it short-circuited the moment they ran the code through its shoddy wires. So, a new solution was made up: a holographic interface like an omni tool, only disembodied and automated.

The whole thing was slowly put together. The code in the more physical parts—in a way—was mostly Samed’s job, with the integration of the geth attack processes being Tali's; with a few home-brewed offensive modules she'd said she'd add.

It was barely morning when Samed and Tali met in the Normandy’s lab, as agreed, though occasional yawns escaped them both. They sat cross-legged on the floor and Samed flicked his omni. A large orange sphere appeared in front of them, with two rotating quarter-circles around it and a sort of eye at its centre. It almost looked adorable. Like a pet. Except for the fact that it was about to get deadly attack software.

Tali began the upload process and not long after, the door to the lab opened. Though it wasn’t Liara or Dr. Chakwas coming in this time, but rather Lieutenant Alenko, whose eyes widened at the sight of the floating ball. "Oh wow, cool! What's that?"

Samed straightened and suddenly became very aware of the itchiness of the long beard hairs that he'd forgotten to shave. "Oh, um. A drone."

"It's only a prototype," Tali continued. "The Commander made the holographic body and I'm uploading the code for its attack processes as we speak."

"Oh cool." Alenko walked past them, that smell he always carried trailing behind him, like it was about to start raining, and stopped at the shelves of various bottles. "Not gonna bother you, just came here for some meds."

"An L2 flare-up, Lieutenant?" Samed asked.

"Yeah, but it's at its end, I can feel it. Just need one more dose of these—" he took a bottle and shook it, "—and I'll be good as new." He poured a tablet onto his palm and he swallowed it fast, with no liquid to guide it. He then turned to Samed, smiled and gave him a thumbs up.

A flutter moved through Samed’s chest and, with a smile that he returned almost by reflex, he turned his gaze back on the glowing ball in front of him.

"Lieutenant Kaidan, you can sit with us if you want." Tali scooted further away, leaving an empty spot between them on the ground. "We could always use another tech expert."

"Ha! Wouldn't call myself an expert, really." 

Alenko sat cross-legged next to Samed, bringing that "about to rain" smell in full force. Maybe it was ozone? It was really similar to the shuttles he’d fix in his shop, and biotics did work more or less on eezo—as far as Samed knew.

"But I did pick up a few things from the Academy,” Alenko continued. “Though, heh, if anyone's the tech expert among us humans here, it's definitely the Commander." 

"Well.” Another flutter shook Samed's chest and he chuckled. “Glad to know my skills are appreciated."

Alenko's eyes quickly fixed on the ball of light standing in the center of the circle the three of them had made. Almost like they were its followers and it was some kind of divine object, no matter how dumb and kind of cute the thing looked.

The Lieutenant extended a hand and "touched" the holographic ball, his fingers going through its exterior. Then he made a grab for its "eye" and both Samed and Tali chuckled.

"I haven't programmed any physical bounds," Samed said. "Figured all that extra code will just bog down its processes."

"Mm. That makes sense." The Lieutenant was still moving his hand through the hologram, like he was fascinated by its mere existence.

"Upload at fifty percent," Tali said.

"Say, how long did this whole thing take you two?"

"A week, I think? No, two."

"Yes, two weeks. That's when you gave me the geth data, about two and a half weeks ago, I think."

"Geth?" Alenko pulled his hand back. "This thing's gonna be a geth?"

"Not exactly. The Commander and I changed most of the code."

"Well, Tali did most of the work, really." Samed grinned and scratched the back of his neck and noticed a curl. Hair was definitely getting a bit long.

...Why was he noticing all of these things this morning?

Tali's omni made a ringing sound. The upload was completed. 

"So, this means we'll need to start testing this thing." Samed turned to Alenko. "Wanna watch, Lieutenant?"

His dark brows raised. "Is that safe?"

"It should be." Tali propped herself up, and in one quick breath she was already on her feet.

Alenko stood up too, though with a bit of a groan, and extended a hand to Samed.

Samed took it and pulled himself up, and a bit too close to Alenko's face. Enough to notice that his eyes were a light brown color, like amber. Or honey.

He blinked, took a step back and just said "Thanks," to which Alenko smiled. "Anyway, um, yeah you should be safe. We're doing this in the cargo hold."

"Great! Let's go."

Alenko and Tali walked in front and Samed trailed behind, with the big round ball of light conspicuously following behind him. They passed by Dr. Chakwas, who gave the three—or four—a wide eyed look right before shaking her head and continuing with whatever work she did on her terminal.

It wasn't long before the two men, the quarian and the drone found themselves in the elevator going down; after a lot of wide berths and nervous salutes. Maybe they should've done this in the cargo hold in the first place. But the lab had better lighting and they didn't bother Liara too much—at least according to her. Also Alenko happened to stop by too. Another tech expert—like Tali said—was always good.

The elevator door opened to the dimness of the lowest deck and Wrex passing by, who said, "What's that?"

"A drone," Samed answered. "We're gonna test it."

The dark line in Wrex's red eyes widened, like a cat about to pounce. Similarly, he looked like he was almost about to jump—luckily he didn't. "Can I join?"

"I don't know, Wrex." Tali scratched her arm.

"Come on! You'll need to test that thing against a krogan!"

"But it doesn't have any physical bounds yet, how are you gonna—" Oh.  _ Oh  _ . He wanted to be the test subject. Samed turned to Tali and Alenko. Alenko's dark brows were raised over his amber eyes and Tali slightly shook her head in a "no".

He then turned to the krogan. "Wrex. Can you handle yourself?"

"Haha! What kind of question is that? Come on!"

A gravelly, "I sure hope you know what you're doing, Commander," came from behind Samed.

He didn't. But what was the worst thing that could happen?

* * *

Rockets. This thing had rockets. It seemed like it couldn't handle that particular program being executed with its current code, but it actually had the capabilities to produce and fire rockets.

Its other offensive capabilities included shocking a target or whoever was nearest and cryo and incendiary attacks—both of which were only prototypes for military grade omni tools. But Tali had managed to figure the programs out herself and install them in her own omni. So she'd included it in the drone's programs, too.

Wrex stood at the far end of the cargo hold with both his shields and biotic barrier up.

The drone made circles around him and just jabbed and prodded at him with its basic electric shocks, which proved to be the easiest ones to run. Not the most effective, because they didn't do much damage, only annoyed him. But also got his attention, which was a useful thing to know. In battle, this little ball of annoyance could be deployed to catch the attention of enemies. Maybe husks? Or even geth? Its shocks would especially be effective with geth.

"Okay, Wrex," Tali yelled and flicked her omni, making the drone stop its shock attacks. "I’m about to try an incendiary attack!"

"Bring it on!"

Tali flicked the omni again and an orange ball of plasma jetted out of the drone's eye and hit Wrex's barrier, making an actual ripple in the bluish glow.

The Lieutenant audibly hissed at the sight. "Well that's not something you want to be hit with in a fight."

"How are you feeling, Wrex?" Samed asked.

"Haha! Finally this little twerp is doing some damage!"

Samed laughed and shook his head and took a look at the charts—the incendiary attack had been a significant load on its performance. It looked like it would fare better when fired from an omni—it had the bigger processing power.

"Damn, didn't think I'd see the nerds harassing the krogan!" Samed turned his head to Ashley holding a cup, accompanied by the smell of coffee. With the Chief here, this was turning out to be quite a party.

"But Wrex actually likes it!" Tali said, which prompted a chortle out of Alenko, who bit his lower lip to stop himself from laughing.

Ash noticed the whole thing and of course added, "Personal preference, LT?" Which made Alenko's face adopt a faint reddish glow. 

For some reason, heat rose up Samed's neck at the whole exchange. He bit the inside of his mouth to hold down a smile and turned to Ash, his whole body facing her. "Alright, Chief. Out of line."

"Sorry, sir— _ shit.  _ "

Several things happened during that " _ shit  _ ".

A performance spike that went off the charts.

A flash behind Samed that lit up the whole cargo hold for a moment.

A loud, thunderous  _ boom. _

Samed turned to the smell of ash and smoke and to Wrex with his arms crossed in front of his face, Tali with her hand on her...mask and the metal hull around Wrex being charred black now instead of grey. In fact, the only grey spot was krogan-shaped and directly behind him. The drone was missing too.

A long silence filled the cargo hold, everyone standing still and wide-eyed.

"That. Was. AWESOME! Again!" Wrex yelled and started to jump, the floor shaking under everyone’s feet.

The comm above turned on with a buzz, with Joker asking, "What the hell is going on down there? Did the krogan finally go rogue?"

"This krogan has never felt better in his life!"

"Uh, Commander?"

Samed blinked and shook his head. "Uh, yeah, everything's fine down here, Joker. Just, um." His eyes met Alenko's and he shrugged. Then his gaze turned to Tali, sitting on the ground in a fetal position. "Don't worry about it," he continued.

"O-kay. Just try not to blow the ship up. I heard a lot of creds went into this. Joker out."

A loud, vocoder-sounding sob came from where Tali sat that snapped Samed back to reality. Whatever had happened, there was now a crying person on the ground and in a quick breath, Samed lunged forward and sat next to her, slinging an arm over her shoulders. "Hey, hey. It's okay."

"No." Tali tried to speak through sobs. "I fired that rocket, I'm sorry, Shepard."

"Hey. It's okay."

"If you want me off this ship, I completely understand, I can be out as soon as—"

"Tali. You're a valuable member of this crew. I'm not gonna kick you out because of a mistake."

"Besides." Wrex crouched in front of her. "That was awesome, kid."

Alenko sat on her other side with a groan and placed a hand on her shoulder. "The work you've been putting in is vital to stopping Saren. You did good, Tali."

"Yeah." Samed continued. "All we need to do is just clean the code up a bit and we have our drones."

Tali sniffed and lifted her head. "You're right, Shepard. I'll get to work right away!"

"You can rest first. This was quite—" Samed turned to the krogan-shaped grey spot on the wall. Then back to Tali. "—a start to the day."

"Okay." She sniffed again. "But I want to make my own version of the holographic body. It's going to be pink and I'm going to name her Chatika vas Paus."

"That's a cute name."

"I have a whole story planned." Tali started to flail her arms as she began explaining. "She is a crew member of the Paus, which is one of the research ships back on the Flotilla." The lights behind her mask had curved into two crescent moons turned to the side. She was going to be fine.

"Come on, Tali." Ash extended a hand which Tali took. "Gonna make you some nice tea. Dextro, of course."

Samed got up too as Wrex paced around the room, the adrenaline probably still flowing through him. "We need to do that again, Shepard." His eyes still looked like a cat about to pounce, even more so now.

"Let's just." Samed sighed and placed two fingers on his forehead. "Do it outside next time, okay?"

"Haha!" Wrex slapped Samed on the back and he coughed from the blow. "You're alright, Shepard."

"Thanks," Samed groaned as he rubbed his back and started walking towards the elevator, followed by Alenko. Though, just as they reached it, the door closed with Ash and Tali inside.

Alenko called it, and it wasn't long before the door opened and the two men were inside.

Samed pressed the up button and Alenko started, "So. What about your drone, Commander? Got a name in mind?"

It was a good question. One that he'd actually been thinking about ever since Tali brought up the idea. "Jabir," he quickly said. "Jab, for short. Because that's what it does. It jabs people, annoys them."

Heat rose up Samed's neck and flushed his face. "It's a pun."

Not a very good one, now that he was explaining it. "A dumb pun."

"Heh. I like it. It fits." Another flutter scurried through Samed's chest just as the elevator stopped.

There had been a lot of those lately, flutters. But before that chain of thought could finish, it was broken by the door opening to Garrus and Liara standing in front of it.

"Commander." Garrus's mandibles shook. "Are you okay? Tali told us what happened."

"More importantly, is Wrex alright? I imagine getting hit by a flying projectile isn't pleasant."

Samed chuckled. "Yeah, he's fine. He even loved it, the big guy."

"What? How could he—"

"Ha! Typical krogan. He must be hungry now."

"Oh, that reminds me," Alenko said as he pressed a hand to his stomach. "I’m starving. What about you, Commander?"

At the question, Samed felt his stomach rumble. With all the commotion, he hadn't even thought about food. "Yeah, I could eat."

"What about you, Garrus? Liara?"

"I was just heating up my dextro meal when I heard the news. Guess I should go back to that."

"I will go check up on Wrex." Liara was already in the elevator. "He might require medical attention." 

The three men walked the short distance to the mess and Garrus took his tray out of the microwave and went to the other room. Alenko pulled two closed trays from the fridge and put one in the oven.

Since the microwave was being occupied, Samed took to making coffee. He pulled two mugs from the cupboard—in case the Lieutenant might want one—and two sachets of black coffee.

A ding came from his side as he was pouring hot water in both of them. Cups of finished coffee in hand, he turned to Alenko, who held one of the trays out in front of Samed.

Amber eyes met his. "Here you go, Shepard, this one's yours." A pleasant tightness gripped Samed's stomach. He'd heated his meal first. Thoughtful.

Samed smiled and extended a hand to pick it up, but noticed the mug he held. He glanced at Alenko again. "And. This one's yours, Lieutenant."

After lots of flailing about, coffee and tray were exchanged.

"Thanks," both of them said at the same time and Alenko chuckled, the sound of it prompting yet another unplanned smile out of Samed.

"Anytime," Samed said just as the microwave dinged again.

Coffee in one hand and a tray that smelled like it had rice and some kind of sauce in other, he got to the table where—everyone sat, really. Tali and Ash with their tea and coffee respectively, Garrus with his dextro meal and Liara and Wrex had joined too, with Liara running scans with her omni over Wrex, who looked annoyed at all of it. Only two chairs were free, opposite one another and Samed took one, with Alenko following not long after and taking the other.

It was a big breakfast. A lot of stories being told about the whole "blowing up Wrex" incident; each containing some new detail, depending on whoever was telling it. It was almost like— 

_ Baaba and Faris move the table to the backyard. The smell of Maama's flower garden meshes with a flurry of different spices Baaba put in the fatayer, even if he didn’t have to. Eid breakfast, the table is rich with food and people, has to be. Tracy even joins this time, wanting to see what the deal is. Laughter as Uncle Faris tells another story, this time about Great-Grandma Maha, working the—  _

_ "Skipper?  _ Hey?" Samed blinked, the memory scurrying back to wherever it came. He turned to Ash's grin she'd get whenever she was about to say something quippy. "Welcome back, sir! Ready to rejoin the Normandy?"

"Sorry, Chief." Samed shook his head. "Drifted off. You were saying?" He took a large sip from his coffee.

"Can you download the security footage from the cargo hold? I think you're the only one here with access."

A gulp almost went too far as laughter built in Samed's stomach. He did as she asked and connected the two giant screens above the table to his omni.

The footage played and replayed as everyone ate or drank, with almost unanimous laughter—and slight horror from Liara—every time the rocket hit Wrex.

Even Tali looked a lot more relaxed now, cheering along as she sipped her tea through a straw.

Alenko too caught Samed's eye; once, twice—Samed couldn't help his eyes drifting to him for some reason. Every time Alenko would be in the middle of a laugh, two lines formed on his cheeks as he smiled. The sight was… nice.

The vid started playing again and this time Alenko's eyes met Samed's in the middle of another laugh. 

The whole moment lasted maybe a fraction of a second, but it felt like time had stopped as amber eyes met his. The dimples on Kaidan's face sent a shockwave through Samed's chest, dimples surrounded by sideburns that looked kinda silly and really cute at the same time.

A pair of wires connected in Samed's mind, just as the  _ boom  _ blasted through the speakers again.


End file.
